Denver Church to Pack 100,000 Meals for Hungry Families Locally and Overseas

Denver United Methodist Church will be hosting a Kids Against Hunger Charlotte packing event on Sunday to prepare 100,000 meals for hungry families both locally in North Carolina and worldwide.

Three shifts of volunteers will be packing highly nutritious dehydrated meals to serve starving and malnourished children around the world in Guatemala and Nicaragua, as well as locally in Lincoln County.

ďMany people forget that the food we pack is not just for impoverished, third-world countries," said Jeff Yoh, co-founder of Kids Against Hunger Charlotte. "It is food you and I could serve at our dinner table. In fact, many of our host organizations have encouraged their volunteers to make the meal for their own family, and experience the meal in their own homes. Itís an inspiring gesture to help people realize that they are providing the same meal to other families who would otherwise go without .ď

Made from four readily available dry ingredients of white long-grain rice, crushed soy, a dehydrated blend of six vegetables, and chicken-flavored vegetarian vitamin & mineral powder, the meals are easy to package, keep for long periods, and require only boiling with water to prepare. The meals offer all nine of the essential amino acids required for complete nutrition - something that canít be said about other typical food relief sources such as rice or beans alone.

A portion of the packed meals will be going to Backpack for Kids, a program sponsored by Denver United Methodist and local Lincoln County churches that strives to provide food for children during the weekends and holidays when school meals are not available. Children receive the backpacks each Friday, packed with nutritious, child friendly items to children who may not otherwise have a nutritious meal outside of school lunches.

In addition to the local efforts, the meals will be going to Guatemala and Nicaragua this March. Members of the Denver church will travel to Guatemala to help start a school-based nutrition program for children in the village of El Sitan. The mothers will prepare the food packets for their children before they go to work in the fields. Kids Against Hunger Charlotte will also be delivering many of these meals to young children and families in Nicaragua. Yoh and his wife Suzanne have an upcoming trip planned along with Samaritanís International, to distribute the meals to the Samaritanís International of Nicaragua compound feeding centers, which serve over 60,000 children every year.

To date, Kids Against Hunger Charlotte has packed 1,486,432 meals with more than 8,300 volunteers. Denver United Methodist Churchís event hopes to increase that number with another 100,000 meals, which would help feed 300 children for a year.

ABOUT KIDS AGAINST HUNGER

Kids Against Hunger Charlotte is one of nearly 100 satellites of Kids Against Hunger, based in New Hope, Minnesota. They have packed more than 1.2 million meals for starving families both locally and worldwide, with the help of more than 5,000 Charlotte volunteers. For more information, to sign up for a shift, or to learn how to sponsor a packing event, please go to www.kidsagainsthungercharlotte.org.